The Twitter Files Parts XI and XII Unrolled
How Twitter let the intelligence community in.
You can find all the Twitter Files unrolled here.
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2.In August 2017, when Facebook decided to suspend 300 accounts with âsuspected Russian origin,â Twitter wasnât worried. Its leaders were sure they didnât have a Russia problem.
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3.âWe did not see a big correlation.â
âNo larger patterns.â
âFB may take action on hundreds of accounts, and we may take action on ~25.â
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4.âKEEP THE FOCUS ON FBâ: Twitter was so sure they had no Russia problem, execs agreed the best PR strategy was to say nothing on record, and quietly hurl reporters at Facebook:
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5.âTwitter is not the focus of inquiry into Russian election meddling right now - the spotlight is on FB,â wrote Public Policy VP Colin Crowell:
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6.In September, 2017, after a cursory review, Twitter informed the Senate it suspended 22 possible Russian accounts, and 179 others with âpossible linksâ to those accounts, amid a larger set of roughly 2700 suspects manually examined.
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7.Receiving these meager results, a furious Senator Mark Warner of Virginia â ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee â held an immediate press conference to denounce Twitterâs report as âfrankly inadequate on every level.â
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8.â#Irony,â mused Crowell the day after Warnerâs presser, after receiving an e-circular from Warnerâs re-election campaign, asking for â$5 or whatever you can spare.â
âLOL,â replied General Counsel Sean Edgett.
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9.âKEEP PRODUCING MATERIALâ After meeting with congressional leaders, Crowell wrote: âWarner has political incentive to keep this issue at top of the news, maintain pressure on us and rest of industry to keep producing material for them.â
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10.âTAKING THEIR CUES FROM HILLARY CLINTONâ Crowell added Dems were taking cues from Hillary Clinton, who that week said: âItâs time for Twitter to stop dragging its heels and live up to the fact that its platform is being used as a tool for cyber-warfare.â
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11. In growing anxiety over its PR problems, Twitter formed a âRussia Task Forceâ to proactively self-investigate.
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12.The âRussia Task Forceâ started mainly with data shared from counterparts at Facebook, centered around accounts supposedly tied to Russiaâs Internet Research Agency (IRA). But the search for Russian perfidy was a dud:
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13. OCT 13 2017: âNo evidence of a coordinated approach, all of the accounts found seem to be lone-wolf type activity (different timing, spend, targeting, <$10k in ad spend).â
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14.OCT 18 2017: âFirst round of RU investigation⌠15 high risk accounts, 3 of which have connections with Russia, although 2 are RT.â
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15.OCT 20 2017: âBuilt new version of the model that is lower precision but higher recall which allows to catch more items. We arenât seeing substantially more suspicious accounts. We expect to find ~20 with a small amount of spend.â
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16.OCT 23 2017: âFinished with investigation⌠2500 full manual account reviews, we think this is exhaustive⌠32 suspicious accounts and only 17 of those are connected with Russia, only 2 of those have significant spend one of which is Russia Today...remaining <$10k in spend.â
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17.Twitterâs search finding âonly 2â significant accounts, âone of which is Russia Today,â was based on the same data that later inspired panic headlines like âRussian Influence Reached 126 Million Through Facebook Aloneâ:
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18.The failure of the âRussia task forceâ to produce âmaterialâ worsened the companyâs PR crisis.
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19.In the weeks after Warnerâs presser, a torrent of stories sourced to the Intel Committee poured into the news, an example being Politicoâs October 13, âTwitter deleted data potentially crucial to Russia probes.â
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20.âWere Twitter a contractor for the FSB⌠they could not have built a more effective disinformation platform,â Johns Hopkins Professor (and Intel Committee âexpertâ) Thomas Rid told Politico.
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21.As congress threatened costly legislation, and Twitter began was subject to more bad press fueled by the committees, the company changed its tune about the smallness of its Russia problem.
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22.âHi guys.. Just passing along for awareness the writeup here from the WashPost today on potential legislation (or new FEC regulations) that may affect our political advertising,â wrote Crowell.
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23. In Washington weeks after the first briefing, Twitter leaders were told by Senate staff that âSen Warner feels like tech industry was in denial for months.â Added an Intel staffer: âBig interest in Politico article about deleted accounts."
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25.âKnowing that our ads policy and product changes are an effort to anticipate congressional oversight, I wanted to share some relevant highlights of the legislation Senators Warner, Klobuchar and McCain will be introducing,â wrote Policy Director Carlos Monje soon after.
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26.âTHE COMMITTEES APPEAR TO HAVE LEAKEDâ Even as Twitter prepared to change its ads policy and remove RT and Sputnik to placate Washington, congress turned the heat up more, apparently leaking the larger, base list of 2700 accounts.
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27.Reporters from all over started to call Twitter about Russia links. Buzzfeed, working with the University of Sheffield, claimed to find a ânew networkâ on Twitter that had âclose connections to⌠Russian-linked bot accounts.â
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28.âIT WILL ONLY EMBOLDEN THEM.â Twitter internally did not want to endorse the Buzzfeed/Sheffield findings:
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29. âSENATE INTEL COMMITTEE IS ASKING⌠POSSIBLE TO WHIP SOMETHING TOGETHER?â Still, when the Buzzfeed piece came out, the Senate asked for âa write up of what happened.â Twitter was soon apologizing for the same accounts theyâd initially told the Senate were not a problem.
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30.âREPORTERS NOW KNOW THIS IS A MODEL THAT WORKSâ
This cycle â threatened legislation, wedded to scare headlines pushed by congressional/intel sources, followed by Twitter caving to moderation asks â would later be formalized in partnerships with federal law enforcement.
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31.Twitter soon settled on its future posture.
In public, it removed content âat our sole discretion.â
Privately, they would âoff-boardâ anything âidentified by the U.S.. intelligence community as a state-sponsored entity conducting cyber-operations.â
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32.Twitter let the âUSICâ into its moderation process. It would not leave.
Wrote Crowell, in an email to the companyâs leaders:
âWe will not be reverting to the status quo.â
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33.For more on the #TwitterFiles, check out @bariweiss, @ShellenbergerMD, @lhfang, and @davidzweig.
Watch this space shortly for another threadâŚ
Part XII
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2.By 2020, Twitter was struggling with the problem of public and private agencies bypassing them and going straight to the media with lists of suspect accounts.
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3.In February, 2020, as COVID broke out, the Global Engagement Center â a fledgling analytic/intelligence arms of the State Department â went to the media with a report called, âRussian Disinformation Apparatus Taking Advantage of Coronavirus Concerns.â
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4.The GEC flagged accounts as âRussian personas and proxiesâ based on criteria like, âDescribing the Coronavirus as an engineered bioweapon,â blaming âresearch conducted at the Wuhan institute,â and âattributing the appearance of the virus to the CIA.â
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5.State also flagged accounts that retweeted news that Twitter banned the popular U.S. ZeroHedge, claiming the episode âled to another flurry of disinformation narratives.â ZH had done reports speculating that the virus had lab origin.
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6.The GEC still led directly to news stories like the AFPâs headline, âRussia-linked disinformation campaign led to coronavirus alarm, US says,â and a Politico story about how âRussian, Chinese, Iranian Disinformation Narratives Echo One Another.â
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7.âYOU HAVENâT MADE A RUSSIA ATTRIBUTION IN SOME TIMEâ When Clemsonâs Media Forensics Hub complained Twitter hadnât âmade a Russia attributionâ in some time, Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth said it was ârevelatory of their motives.â
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8.âWEâRE HAPPY TO WORK DIRECTLY WITH YOU ON THIS, INSTEAD OF NBC.â Roth tried in vain to convince outsider researchers like the Clemson lab to check with them before pushing stories about foreign interference to media.
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9.Twitter was also trying to reduce the number of agencies with access to Roth. âIf these folks are like House Homeland Committee and DHS, once we give them a direct contact with Yoel, they will want to come back to him again and again,â said policy director Carlos Monje.
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10.When the State Department/GEC â remember this was 2020, during the Trump administration â wanted to publicize a list of 5,500 accounts it claimed would âamplify Chinese propaganda and disinformationâ about COVID, Twitter analysts were beside themselves.
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11.The GEC report appeared based on DHS data circulated earlier that week, and included accounts that followed âtwo or moreâ Chinese diplomatic accounts. They reportedly ended up with a list ânearly 250,000â names long, and included Canadian officials and a CNN account:
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12.Roth saw GECâs move as an attempt by the GEC to use intel from other agencies to âinsert themselvesâ into the content moderation club that included Twitter, Facebook, the FBI, DHS, and others:
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13.The GEC was soon agreeing to loop in Twitter before going public, but they were using a technique that had boxed in Twitter before. âThe delta between when they share material and when they go to the press continues to be problematic,â wrote one comms official.
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15.âIT MAKES SENSE TO PUSH BACK ON GEC PARTICIPATION IN THIS FORUMâ When the FBI informed Twitter the GEC wanted to be included in the regular âindustry callâ between companies like Twitter and Facebook and the DHS and FBI, Twitter leaders balked at first.
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16.Facebook, Google, and Twitter executives were united in opposition to GECâs inclusion, with ostensible reasons including, âThe GECâs mandate for offensive IO to promote American interests.â
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17.A deeper reason was a perception that unlike the DHS and FBI, which were âapolitical,â as Roth put it, the GEC was âpolitical,â which in Twitter-ese appeared to be partisan code.
âI think they thought the FBI was less Trumpy,â is how one former DOD official put it.
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18.After spending years rolling over for Democratic Party requests for âactionâ on âRussia-linkedâ accounts, Twitter was suddenly playing tough. Why? Because, as Roth put it, it would pose âmajor risksâ to bring the GEC in, âespecially as the election heats up.â
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19.When senior lawyer Stacia Cardille tried to argue against the GECâs inclusion to the FBI, the words resonated âwith Elvis, not Laura,â i.e. with agent Elvis Chan, not Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF) unit chief Laura Dehmlow:
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20.Eventually the FBI argued, first to Facebook, for a compromise solution: other USG agencies could participate in the âindustryâ calls, but the FBI and DHS would act as sole âconduits.â
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21.Roth reached out to Chan with concerns about letting the âpress-happyâ GEC in, expressing hope they could keep the âcircle of trust small.â
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22."STATE... NSA, and CIA" Chan reassured him it would be a âone-wayâ channel, and âState/GEC, NSA, and CIA have expressed interest in being allowed on in listen mode only.â
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23."BELLY BUTTON" âWe can give you everything weâre seeing from the FBI and USIC agencies,â Chan explained, but the DHS agency CISA âwill know whatâs going on in each state.â He went on to ask if industry could ârely on the FBI to be the belly button of the USG."
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24.They eventually settled on an industry call via Signal. In an impressive display of operational security, Chan circulated private numbers of each companyâs chief moderation officer in a Word Doc marked âSignal Phone Numbers,â subject-lined, âList of Numbers.â
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25.Twitter was taking requests from every conceivable government body, beginning with the Senate Intel Committee (SSCI), which seemed to need reassurance Twitter was taking FBI direction. Execs rushed to tell âTeam SSCIâ they zapped five accounts on an FBI tip:
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26.Requests arrived and were escalated from all over: from Treasury, the NSA, virtually every state, the HHS, from the FBI and DHS, and more:
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27.They also received an astonishing variety of requests from officials asking for individuals they didnât like to be banned. Here, the office for Democrat and House Intel Committee chief Adam Schiff asks Twitter to ban journalist Paul Sperry:
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28.âWE DONâT DO THISâ Even Twitter declined to honor Schiffâs request at the time. Sperry was later suspended, however.
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29.Twitter honored almost everyone elseâs requests, even those from GEC â including a decision to ban accounts like @RebelProtests and @bricsmedia because GEC identified them as âGRU-controlledâ and linked âto the Russian government,â respectively:
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30.The GEC requests were what a former CIA staffer working at Twitter was referring to, when he said, âOur window on that is closing,â meaning they days when Twitter could say no to serious requests were over.
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31.Remember the 2017 âinternal guidanceâ in which Twitter decided to remove any user âidentified by the U.S. intelligence communityâ as a state-sponsored entity committing cyber operations? By 2020 such identifications came in bulk.
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32.âUSIC" requests often simply began âWe assessâ and then provided lists (sometimes, in separate excel docs) they believed were connected to Russiaâs Internet Research Agency and committing cyber ops, from Africa to South America to the U.S.:
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33.One brief report, sent right after Russiaâs invasion of Ukraine early last year, flagged major Russian outlets like Vedomosti and Gazeta.ru. Note the language about âstate actorsâ fits Twitterâs internal guidance.
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34.Some reports were just a paragraph long and said things like: âThe attached email accounts⌠were possibly used for âinfluence operations, social media collection, or social engineering.â Without further explanation, Twitter would be forwarded an excel doc:
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35.They were even warned about publicity surrounding a book by former Ukraine prosecutor Viktor Shokhin, who alleged âcorruption by the U.S. governmentâ â specifically by Joe Biden.
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36.By the weeks before the election in 2020, Twitter was so confused by the various streams of incoming requests, staffers had to ask the FBI which was which:
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37.âI APOLOGIZE IN ADVANCE FOR YOUR WORK LOADâ: Requests poured in from FBI offices all over the country, day after day, hour after hour: If Twitter didnât act quickly, questions came: âWas action taken?â âAny movement?â
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39.It all led to the situation described by @ShellenbergerMD two weeks ago, in which Twitter was paid $3,415,323, essentially for being an overwhelmed subcontractor.
Twitter wasnât just paid. For the amount of work they did for government, they were underpaid.
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40.For more on the #TwitterFiles, check out @bariweiss, @ShellenbergerMD, @lhfang, and @davidzweig. For more on this story, read
